Andy001z: I have a clean plate consisting of nothing more than a clipped-out image of myself against a transparent background. I use this as a basis for the effects against another clean plate without me. I created a point layer, to which I anchored the clip.

I then used the Atomic Particle effect on the image, spreading it out and moving the point layer to right. Having determined how it looked as a dematerialisation, I then reversed the beginning and end points of the motion, as well as the dispersion of the Atomic Particle effect.

I took the same plate with my image on it and created a composite shot from it. This image has a mask, which I copied.

I then added a particle simulator layer and pasted the mask onto it. I removed the original media, since I no longer needed it. Once I had set up the particles to appear how I wanted them, I expanded the mask by 14 pixels and added 54 pixels of feathering in both directions. The work on the composite was now complete.

I also have a basic composite shot for vanishing and another for reappearing. They consist of a clean plate background, the clip of me, and a second clip for the shadow on the side. The latter two have the opacity changed by keyframes to cause a fade effect.

I took the vanishing composite and created a new one, to which I added the composite with the particle simulator, starting it at half a second. I added the blur effect to the simulator composite, starting it a 0 pixels at the one second mark and increasing it to 350 at two and a half seconds in the vertical direction. From the two second mark, I keyframed a fade-out of the opacity from 100% to 0% over the next half second.

In the meantime, I keyframed the opacity of the clip of me from 100% to 0% over half a second from the one second mark. The opacity of the shadow section went from full to zero from the one to two second marks.

And voilà, you have the orbing effect (or, at least, my version of it).